Meet your lecturers: Professor Bill Chaplin

Professor Bill Chaplin on teaching "...in some of the project work we do in some of the later years we can be using some of the cutting edge research to give students the chance to do things that no one else in the world has done before."

Bill Chaplin is the University's Professor of Astrophysics, 1st year lecturer, and leader of the NASA Kepler Mission. You can find out more about Bill's approach to teaching and learning by watching the video above.

Bill leads the programme of the NASA Kepler Mission, devoted to the investigation of solar-type stars, listening to their music as they resonate to determine their characteristics. He is actively engaged in promoting solar and stellar research in both national and international media, and his research enables our students to learn from these discoveries.

Professor Bill Chaplin "My research is exciting and interesting because it's dealing with some really fundamental questions that relate to why we are here in the universes, what conditions are required to support life. You can see that that's something that really excites our undergraduate students."

Bill inspires students with cutting edge research and discoveries, inspiring new thoughts and perspectives on the world and Universe around us. Bill teaches on the University's undergraduate Physics and Astronomy programmes. He gives introductory lectures on general astronomy, as well as specialized lectures on stars. He also runs the first-year astrophysics laboratory, where, for example, students use real data to detect and study planets around other stars.